Two are Nominated to be BGCT Officers

Bell to be nominated for BGCT president
By Marv Knox Editor

SAN ANGELO—Michael Bell, pastor of Greater St. Stephen First Baptist Church in Fort Worth and current first vice president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, will be nominated for president of the BGCT this fall.

If elected, Bell would become the first African-American president of the state convention. He would succeed Albert Reyes, the first non-Anglo BGCT president.

David Currie, executive director of Texas Baptists Committed, announced he plans to nominate Bell for the presidency when the convention meets in Austin Nov. 14-15.

“Michael has a long, distinguished history of leadership, not only with our African-American churches, but with all Texas Baptists,” Currie said. “He has served on many BGCT committees through the years as well as many leadership positions with the Texas Baptist African American Fellowship.

“In the last few years, Michael has provided strong leadership within his own church as well as the Fellowship, encouraging African-American pastors to increase their support of the Cooperative Program,” the BGCT’s unified budget, Currie added.

“Historically, due to trust issues, geographical issues and the reality that so many African-American churches invest heavily in local social ministries due to the needs of their congregations and local communities, African-American churches have not supported the CP in percentages comparable to many other churches. Michael has worked tirelessly to help these pastors understand the importance of cooperative missions.”

Currie called Bell’s possible election a “historic moment in Texas Baptist history,” noting Bell would become the BGCT’s first African-American president, immediately following its first Hispanic president.

“This is important because the BGCT is a unique convention with many more ethnic congregations than any other state convention,” Currie said. “Texas Baptists are striving intentionally to include all our churches—large and bivocational, urban and rural, ethnic and Anglo—in our united effort to ‘be the presence of Christ in the world.

“We also want all churches to feel at home, regardless on their feelings regarding the last 25 years in Southern Baptist life. We need everyone united and cooperating to be truly effective in spreading God’s kingdom.”

Although Bell’s election would be historic, his race is not the deciding factor for his nomination, Currie added. “I will not nominate Michael just because he is an African-American pastor but because he is a great Texas Baptist pastor who has demonstrated leadership and commitment for years. As we move toward our future as Texas Baptists, we need to move beyond labels to one united cooperative family.”

“I welcome any opportunity to serve our beloved convention,” Bell said in response to Currie’s nomination, adding he is enthusiastic about both the present and future of the BGCT.

Bell noted he respects, appreciates and feels challenged by “the rich legacy of our convention’s unwavering commitment to missions and evangelism.”

“The BGCT is always in the process of becoming,” he said. “We’re continuously reaching and stretching to be what God has called, constituted, commissioned and uniquely capacitated us to be. … We have striven as a convention to be true to the authentic intention of Jesus to preach, present and live the gospel and to make a redemptive difference in the lives of men and women, boys and girls.”

The BGCT has benefited from the leadership of its current president, Reyes, his predecessor, Ken Hall, and others who went before them, Bell said, praising them for how they “prayerfully and skillfully assisted our convention in navigating the waters of comprehensive and complex and global change.”

Reyes and Hall particularly have presided over major change. During their tenures, the convention has adopted new mission, vision, values and priority statements and set in motion the most significant governance and organizational changes in five decades.

“The reorganization and governance initiatives were and are needed in light of the combined impact of paradigm shifts in society, increased racial/ethnic pluralism and globalization,” Bell said. “Those were wise moves.”

Firsthand experience leads Bell to champion the BGCT’s focus on local congregations, he said.’“For the past 20 years, I’ve been privileged to pastor a congregation of people whose focus and heart have been the gospel of Jesus Christ, who reveals God’s love for all people and who by the Holy Spirit empowers us to live and to serve in love.

“In line with this, the promise and potential of our convention is to communicate to people everywhere that God’s love reaches out and hugs them, and God’s love reaches out to grow them and invite them to a common plane of what God is doing to make and keep human life human in the world.”

That potential for ministering to people in Jesus’ name led Bell’s church to increase its Cooperative Program contributions in recent years, he said.

“When I began to be aware that Texas Baptists can indeed do more together than we can by ourselves, I started talking to our church about refocusing our fiscal resources so we can better partner and collaborate with others in reaching the world for Christ,” he explained.

Greater St. Stephen has helped fund its Cooperative Program increase by postponing plans to add a minister of education to the church staff, he said. “You’re talking about a church where at least 15 percent of the adults are unemployed,” he added. “But we are excited about what we are doing.”

Bell’s primary goal as president would be to strengthen the BGCT, he said.

“I don’t have a platform, so to speak, but I want to do the best that I can to help this convention be what God intended it to be,” he noted.

Bell would try to help the convention “sharpen the focus when it comes to letting people who we are and what we are about,” he said. “We’ve got to let people know Jesus is the gravitational center of who we are about—the core of who we are as Christians.”

He also would place an emphasis on leading people to faith in Christ, he added. “I will work to help build and to grow our vision for evangelism—to help every congregation who wants to help reach and baptize at least 10 percent more people than they’re currently baptizing. That’s a doable goal.”

And he would work to help Texas Baptists “reclarify” their identity as “a family of churches and institutions and auxiliary ministries and people who really love God and who are committed to actualizing the vision God has for us as his people—reaching people with the gospel of Jesus Christ and incarnating that gospel and making a difference in the people we touch.”

Bell is vice chairman of the BGCT Christian Life Commission and has been president of the Tarrant Baptist Association African American Fellowship since last year.

Greater St. Stephen First Baptist Church has 894 resident members and has baptized 47 new Christians in the last two years. The church has an average combined attendance of 320 at two Sunday morning worship services and about 95 at its Sunday evening worship service.

The church has increased its contributions to the state convention in 2004 and in 2005, giving $1,554 to the Cooperative Program for BGCT causes in 2003, $3,614 in 2004, and $4,420 through July of this year, noted Clay Price, the convention’s director of research and information services. In 2004, it was the fourth-largest Cooperative Program giver for African American churches its size (100-400 in worship) in the state convention.

So far in 2005, Greater St. Stephen is the eighth-largest Cooperative Program giver among all BGCT African-American churches, Price added. Its giving in 2005 puts the church in the top 25 percent of all givers to the BGCT’s Cooperative Program this year.

Bell is the executive director and founder of the Southeast Neighborhood Interest Coalition in Forth Worth, and he has been president of the Tarrant Baptist Association African American Fellowship since 1994. He also serves on several community boards and is or has been chairman of Tarrant Clergy for Inter-Ethnic Peace and Justice and the county American Cancer Society board.

He is a member of the Texas Baptists Committed board of directors and was chairman of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Committee on Representation and Relationships. He has been a member of the CBF Coordinating Council and the Baptist Advisory Committee at Texas Christian University’s Brite Divinity School where he has taught and currently serves as a theological reflection group leader.

Bell also has been an instructor for the National Baptist Convention, USA’s Congress of Christian Education, both nationally and in Texas.

Among his recognitions, Bell has received the Invisible Giant Award from the National Voting Rights Museum & Institute, the Human Relations Award from the Dallas Interdenominational Ministers’ Association, the TBC African-American Leadership Award from Texas Baptists Committed and the BGCT, the Community Service Award from the East Fort Worth Interdenominational Ministers’ Alliance, and the Racial Justice & Reconciliation Award from the Tarrant Area Community of Churches. He also is a charter member of the Mainstream Baptist Network Hall of Fame.

Bell is a native of Marshall and grew upin Fort Worth.

He earned a bachelor’s degree from Wiley College in Marshall, master’s degrees from Howard University Divinity School in Washington and the University of Texas at Tyler, and a doctorate from the Interdenominational Theological Center and Morehouse School of Religion in Atlanta.

He has been pastor of four churches and also taught public school and at Jarvis Christian College in Hawkins.

He and his wife, Mary Louise, have three children and three grandchildren.

October 2005